Matera, the only capital city of an Italian province to be without a railway station, has been chosen as the European cultural capital for 2019. The bet on the future is open but what is the price to pay for playing at this table? What has the city sacrificed from its past and its history? Andrea Di Consoli, a writer of Lucanian origins, strolls along the streets of the “Sassi”, the oldest district of Matera, declared patrimony of humanity by UNESCO in 1993, as well as those of the outskirts – the “new Sassi”.

He hears the voices of change as if they are witnessing a civilization that no longer exists, the one of humble peasants described by Carlo Levi, while searching for the true soul of the city. A soul that possibly resembles the soul of all Italy, straddling between the past and wishing for the future.